QoS architecture for session oriented GIG applications

Providing end-to-end QoS in the global information grid (GIG) network is essential for supporting mission critical communications. Although there has been extensive research and standardization into providing end-to-end QoS in the public Internet, the proposed architectures such as IntServ, DiffServ, Bandwidth Broker etc., are mainly tailored for wired networks. These architectures may not be directly applied to wireless networks such as mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) and satellite networks, due to processing constraints at mobile hosts, total capacity constraints, time varying link connectivity and capacity etc. In this paper, we survey existing QoS architectures for the Internet and present a detailed survey analysis comparing the different QoS alternatives in terms of their applicability to the GIG. For each architecture, we evaluate its suitability for providing QoS guarantees in each of the three main network component types of the GIG: MANETs, satellite networks and GIG-bandwidth expansion (GIG-BE); and how they would interact with each other to provide end-to-end QoS. We also briefly present hybrid QoS architectures that may be suited to provide end-to-end QoS in the GIG